Los Angeles Times' Scores

For 16,522 reviews, this publication has graded:
  • 56% higher than the average critic
  • 6% same as the average critic
  • 38% lower than the average critic
On average, this publication grades 2.3 points lower than other critics. (0-100 point scale)
Average Movie review score: 63
Highest review score: 100 Sand Storm
Lowest review score: 0 Saw VI
Score distribution:
16522 movie reviews
  1. With the same clarity and fluency he brought to far sunnier material in “Casting By,” Donahue pinpoints the devastating intersection of personal trauma and institutional neglect in an age of perpetual war.
  2. The best part of Dependent’s Day is the rapid-fire, easy-breezy banter between Burke and Robledo — their connection is palpable, and feels comfortable and lived in.
  3. Despite the admittedly unique angle, this ambitious drama gets crushed under the considerable weight of its artistic, as well as budgetary, limitations.
  4. Often exhibiting the best of DIY cinema sensibilities — a mixture of focus, mood, and lived-in characterizations — Green is Gold augurs good things for the multi-hyphenate Baxter.
  5. Writer-director-actor Miles Doleac’s sprawling Southern-fried mystery The Hollow has the rich characters and milieu of a good literary novel, but never quite works as a movie.
  6. Even a talented cast can’t overcome the script from five screenwriters, whose uneven final product is surprisingly bland for all its raunchiness.
  7. More than any of the sequels, “Ravager” upholds the mind-bending originality and emotional depth of the first “Phantasm.” From the surprise cameos by old characters to the constant twisting of dreams and reality, it’s suffused with the feeling of people trying to regain control of their lives, to get back what they’ve lost.
  8. Characters and situations are painted in such simple, broad strokes, we’re asked to take much at face value.
  9. While The Greasy Strangler eventually becomes tiresome in its relentless repellence, it’s just so odd it deserves to be lauded for simply existing.
  10. Terrence Malick’s Voyage of Time: The Imax Experience is a glorious cosmic reverie, a feast for the eyes and a balm for the soul in these angry, contentious times.
  11. Sand Storm's great gift is that it is human, not didactic, showing not only how difficult this iron web of culture and tradition is to escape from but also how much it poisons the lives of the men who enforce it as much as the women who are victimized by it.
  12. There are a few story threads left hanging, but ultimately, the film is a thoughtful rumination on the far-reaching tentacles of grief, and the crucial importance of asserting humanity that persists in the face of devastation.
  13. With its muddy timeline, kaleidoscope of fantasies, flashbacks and hallucinations, broad characterizations and sitcom slickness, the film never settles down long enough to congeal, much less feel remotely connected to reality.
  14. Much of the dialogue is too literal and undercut by its stolid earnestness, and many of the characters are left underdeveloped.
  15. Even the most sophisticated software can’t give characters a sense of weight or a way of moving that suggests their personality. Nor can it create an engaging story. Sadly, director Deane Taylor and his crew fail to provide those elements.
  16. The movie is first fascinating, then terrifying.
  17. [A] misguided hybrid that makes tediously clear from the outset that the conceit just isn’t working.
  18. There’s little that’s not dispiriting about Among the Believers and its measured, direct entrée into a closed world of hopeless boys and girls memorizing the Koran, but forbidden from learning its meanings.
  19. And although the film might stint on full renditions of their songs, one of the few played in its entirety is a gorgeous, relaxed acoustic version of “Honky Tonk Women” delivered by Mick and Keith in a vacant dressing room.
  20. The “time travel” bit kicks in for real — or rather surreal. But this half-baked device proves too little, too late and fails to jump start the film’s prosaic narrative.
  21. What “black lives matter” means in essence, one of this film’s voices says, “is that all lives matter,” a point “13th” makes with undeniable eloquence as well as persuasive force.
  22. The empathy that Taylor summoned so effortlessly in his previous films feels strained and unpersuasive here, and moments that should be lacerating...are overplayed to ghastly effect.
  23. A scrappy war flick with a fair amount of combat suspense but a whole lot of clichéd dialogue.
  24. 37
    A drama that plays out as an overdetermined thesis, with Genovese herself (Christina Brucato) a footnote to the darkly stylized plunge into lives of quiet desperation.
  25. The Birth of a Nation certainly has the power of conviction, but the grace of art escapes it.
  26. Baya Medhaffar inhabits the role of Farah with a blazing exuberance that’s matched by a dynamic sense of place. Director Leyla Bouzid may struggle to shape her narrative in the final reels, but through most of its running time her first feature pulses with in-the-moment vitality.
  27. The fantasy of a punk icon for a friend is one thing, but the filmmakers undercut the modest liveliness of their enterprise with a save-the-day storyline that seems far removed from the roiling, anti-authoritative ethos of punk.
  28. Despite the film’s brief running time, it packs in vital social context, gay history and nostalgic imagery along with some sad truths.
  29. A thoroughly amateurish un-comedy about show business.
  30. Loserville is somehow two different movies — a traditional teen comedy mixed with a message-driven drama about the dangers of bullying — without enough connective tissue linking characters or scenes to lend it cohesion.

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